Vodafone Ghana and Facebook have partnered to deploy Facebook’s Express wi-fi in Ghana. This will be the fourth deployment in Africa after Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. It has also been deployed in India.
Express Wi-Fi is a program that helps retail entrepreneurs to offer fast and affordable Wi-Fi services at hotspots spread across their communities. It is designed to complement mobile data offerings by providing a low-cost, high bandwidth alternative for getting online and access apps, download and stream content.
According to the National Communications Authority, despite a data penetration rate of 80.3 per cent, large portions of underprivileged Ghanaians were still unable to afford easy access to data due to the price.
At the unveiling of the service at Jamestown in Accra, the CEO of Vodafone Ghana, Ms Yolanda Cuba, said it was necessary for everyone no matter his or her background to connect to industrial and digital revolution especially in the current world where technology dominates.
The service offers 100MB of data for GHC1.00 and 1GB of data over a period of seven days for GHC5.00. It is opened to users of all other networks, without necessarily switching to the Vodafone network.
Customers will have access to the Internet via any available Vodafone Express Wi-Fi hotspot within Accra and communities like Nima, James Town, Kanda, Pig Farm, Abossey Okine and many others.
